Cricket

On june 11th Australia prevailed over India to win cricket’s World Test Championship. Although national teams have played each other in the Test format since 1877, this event is new. Australia are only its second victors, after New Zealand in 2021.

The International Cricket Council (icc) has held world championships for one-day cricket since 1975, and for t20 matches, which last just a few hours, since 2007. As these short formats have gained popularity, purists have fretted that Test cricket’s stature was at risk. In response, the icc launched the World Test Championship.

Because Test matches can last up to five days, too long for prolonged tournaments to be practical, the icc devised an awkward system. Over two years of games, teams earn points to qualify for a final. However, they play varying numbers of matches, and face different levels of opposition. For example, Bangladesh played 12 games, and none versus Australia and England, two of cricket’s giants. In contrast, half of India’s 18 matches were against those teams.

So were Australia deserving winners? One tool to assess their strength is Elo, a rating system built for chess that has been used for various sports, but rarely for cricket. All teams start with a score of 1,500 and then swap points after each match, with the winner’s rating rising and the loser’s falling. The more surprising the result, the more points get traded. Elo also accounts for home advantage, a big edge for teams that modify pitches to suit their styles.

Calculating Elo scores back to 1947, we find that the World Test Championship got this one right: the world’s best team is indeed Australia. By historical standards, its rating of 1,685 is similar to South Africa’s peak in 2013. However, the team pales in comparison with Australia’s own past. In January 2008 an Australian team packed with stars achieved a record Elo score of 1,797. If that team were to time-travel to the present, Elo suggests it would beat today’s Australians 66% of the time.

The most striking recent trend in the data is the sharp rise in England’s rating since the team made Brendon McCullum its coach in May 2022. Under his stewardship, England have taken a Test-wide trend of trying to score faster and put it into overdrive. This hyper-aggressive style, nicknamed “Bazball”, has borne fruit: England have won 11 of their past 13 Tests, while scoring an unprecedented five runs per over. During that period, their Elo score has risen by nearly 100 points, to 1,637. This week, England begin the Ashes, their biennial five-match series against Australia. If they win at least three Tests, they will become Elo’s top-rated team.

England’s surge has aligned performance on the pitch with cricket’s finances. The sport’s economic titan is India, expected to account for 39% of international media revenue across all formats in 2024-27. England and Australia jointly make up a further 13%. Because broadcasters pay only paltry amounts for Test matches lacking a “big-three” team, other countries have little economic incentive to play them. This leads weaker teams to participate in fewer Test matches, and has left the once-mighty West Indies struggling to pay their players. On current trends, New Zealand, the world’s first official Test champions, will probably be the last winners outside the big three for years to come